Ethics - Protective Measures for Safeguarding Electronic Resources

Instructional Setting and Content Area I currently teach seventh grade students in three different levels of classes. The instructional problem that I will be focusing on is in my Common Core 7 classes. These classes are typical or average seventh grade level content and standards. The two classes at this level that I teach are made up of 22 and 24 students. Out of these 46 students, there are 3 students with IEPs and 6 with 504 Plans. The students that have IEPs have goal areas in reading or writing as well as executive functioning. The students with 504 Plans include students that have diagnoses of ADHD, allergies, and diabetes. My class of 24 students is a co-taught class with a resource teacher and me co-teaching the class. Our school/district is a 1:1 district in which all of our middle school students use a chromebook. Our elementary students use iPads. Protective Measures for Safeguarding Electronic Resources In our district we take safeguarding electronic resources very seriously. Since we are a 1:1 district, we expect our students to have and use technology on a regular basis. As we plan for this use, we take protective measures to ensure the safety of our students and their information. I will explore three threats, viruses, cyberbullying, and online predators. The first threat, viruses, have two main protective measures. Our district of course has a firewall to protect everyone that is using the school’s network. This helps with eliminating the chance of viruses being sent to devices that are attached to the network. We also are a Google district, where we use and encourage our students to use Google products. One of the key features that I like with Google is the Gaggle filter that all of our students’ work and/or email go through. Since our students use GMail as their email system, the district has the ability to allow or not allow emails from people that are or are not in our organization or district. As our students get older they have more freedom or flexibility on who they can or can not communicate with using their email accounts. The second threat, cyberbullying, also relies on the Google system for some of the protective measures. We are a Google district, where we use and encourage our students to use Google products. One of the key features that I like with Google is the Gaggle filter that all of our students’ work and/or email go through. This filter system is searching for key words or sayings. Some of these include inappropriate words such as swears or sexual slang and harmful statements of others or oneself. The Gaggle filter also scans pictures to make sure that they are appropriate. For example, if a student sends or is sent an inappropriate image of someone that appears to be a minor, the filter alerts the district and the National Center of Missing Children. If the filter finds these terms, Gaggle alerts our District and then the appropriate administrators or staff are alerted to address the concern. The only negative of the Gaggle filter is that at times a student may be working on a legitimate writing piece, like a fictional essay for class, that is flagged because of inappropriate content. This then triggers that check-in with an administrator which some consider a waste of time, but I would rather be safe than sorry The final threat, online predators, has three main protective measures. The two that were mentioned earlier, the firewall and Gaggle/Google security is the first defense. The other, and perhaps more important is educating our students on what being a good digital citizen means. We spend a lot of time discussing with our students the safety of using electronics. We want to make sure that our students not only know what they should be looking out for, but what to do if they have questions or need help. I try to encourage my students that when in doubt they should ask an adult for help or guidance. In my classroom, I follow our district guidelines to help promote digital safety and help my students become aware of how to keep themselves safe in our electronic world. We spend time discussing how important it is to use solid passwords to protect ourselves and our electronic files. We also look at basic skills of making sure we do not open emails from unknown people or emails that seem suspicious or too good to be true. Along with this, we discuss what students should do if something happens. The best response is to get assistance from an adult. In many of our electronic programs or Apps, we have our students log into the program using the Clever Portal. The Clever Portal is a comprehensive and secure login that allows the district to customize what Apps are available to students. I also use GoGuardian to help monitor what students are doing while they are online. The final piece of safeguarding our resources and our students while they are online is making sure we have and follow expectations. I follow our district’s electronic behavior expectations and make sure that the students know that these are there and designed to protect them and their peers. All of our students and parents sign an agreement at the beginning of the year that discusses the district level expectations. I further explain what these expectations look like in my classroom. Some examples include, using devices when asked or when appropriate. Meaning, most of our materials are available online, so students might be accessing those resources instead of having their textbook with them in class. GoGuardian is a tool that also helps to monitor students’ behavior on devices and helps monitor behavior expectations.